Pineapple
by pyne
Summary: Not your average TAITO fic. Tai and Matt are unable to accept aspects of who they are. Will they succeed? Or will they destroy each other, first? rated NC for blood and language.


Disclaimer: I don't own 'em, yadda, yadda, yadda. I don't earn a penny, I just like messing with these characters. That is all. 

****

Feedback welcome! :D

Pineapple

by pyne

We fight.

We fight _a lot_.

It was once a day--sometimes more--until the school finally sat our parents down to discuss the 'problem' of our constant bloody fights. We fought in the cafeteria, in the bathrooms, in the parking lot, the hallways, anywhere there was enough space to form a ring and for us to circle.

Me and Matt.

The Digital world is the cause of all of this; it made us meet. I would have gone on my entire life thinking Matt was some snot-nosed, delicate, snobby bastard if we hadn't been put there together. I wonder what he would have gone on thinking of me... A brainless jock, perhaps? Maybe a loser whose only aspiration in life was to work in an office and drink beer until my gut fell out and my brains rotted. Maybe.

Maybe.

But it didn't happen that way. I became the leader and he became my second, and everything worked just beautifully until the adventure ended, the dream-time died and the Digi-Ports closed. 

We were utterly unsuited for the Real World.

We began feeling uncomfortable with each other. At first, I wasn't sure what it was, and I guess all of us became a little depressed. I wasted afternoon after afternoon in front of the tube at home instead of out in the sunshine where I normally could have been found. I watched soap operas, talk shows, crappy animes, and game shows. My mother would gaze at me sometimes and ask what was wrong. How could I tell her?

In the Digital world, we all had come together as a group. We all defined ourselves as members of the Chosen. We _had been_ the Chosen and nothing else. We lived to be the Chosen.

Now the Chosen didn't matter anymore. _We_ didn't matter anymore. 

Our group was disintegrated and our places had dried up and floated away like a puddle on a hot sidewalk.

Where did Matt and me stand anymore? I couldn't be the leader if there was nothing for me to lead. He couldn't be the moody rebel if there was nothing to rebel against. 

It was beautiful.

It was a trap of our own making. 

0

Matt tapped my shoulder, whispered to me, "Question thirteen."

I looked up, sure that the entire class had heard his whisper in the silence of the classroom. Every so often that silence would be punctuated by the scratching of a pencil or a mutter under a student's breath. I hated pop quizzes.

It was incredible, but it appeared no one had heard, not even cranky Mr. Kasaburi at the front. Probably reading adult manga again, like the time me and Matt had opened his briefcase and that porno comic fell out.

__

Whatever, I thought, relieved that we had escaped notice, not especially caring about what some forty-year-old man did to get his jollies. I glanced down at my paper. _Question thirteen...Question thir-teeeen... _Maybe it was because Matt spent a lot of time on stage. Actors and musicians have to learn voice projection or whatever it's called. It's a neat trick. Matt can 'speak' quietly, but be heard all around the room. I guess he can do the opposite, too. Direct his voice so only I can hear. Cool.

Now. Question thirteen.

Blank.

I blinked. Hadn't I done that? Apparently not. I flipped the paper over and glanced at the other side, as if some _other_ question thirteen might pop into existence. 

"Matt," I said, speaking low and trying to imitate the ventriloquist I'd seen on TV. "I--" And then noticed perverted old Mr. Kasaburi giving me the mother of all evil eyeballs. My throat froze and I turned back to my own paper. _That was close!_ I thought as I felt Matt jabbing my back again. I pretended not to notice.

The jabs became more insistent. It appeared Matt had missed Kasaburi's warning. Well, I couldn't exactly turn around and tell Matt so. I ignored him.

Eventually, the insistent jabbing stopped and we handed in our papers.

0

Outside of class, Matt confronted me. He grabbed my arm in those delicate looking hands of his, hands that girls swoon over with the perfectly done nails and the winkle-less skin. They truly are an artist's hands. 

I spun around with annoyance crinkling my brow. "What? Jeeze, man..."

He released my hand and stepped back, then folded his arms across his chest. He looked annoyed, troubled. A lock of blonde hair fell across his sky-blue eyes. 

For a moment I had the weirdest urge to reach my own rough hands up and brush it away. That urge jolted me like a thunderbolt from the sky. When had I ever thought of doing that before? It seemed too intimate to be something a friend would do for a friend. I swallowed and quickly averted my gaze to the lockers at my right. My hand, the one I had envisioned tenderly brushing the hair away, tingled. What the Hell was wrong with me? My heart pounded away inside my chest, beating against my ribs to get out. I put a hand overtop of it briefly. Could I contain the problem?

"I asked you for help, Tai."

That quality in his voice was the same I had listened to on the battlefield. The same voice that I had responded to, listened to. The jolted feeling in the pit of my stomach began to bubble and my chest felt a size too small.

What was wrong? 

Something was definitely wrong. 

"I, uhm," I began, suddenly achingly conscious of the flow of students around me. Could they see my thoughts? Could they just _look_ at me and know that I'd wanted to touch Matt? Could _everyone _see? I felt sick. I felt small. I wanted to hide.

__

Oh, God. 

"I couldn't. Mr. Kasaburi was looking, he--" 

Matt blew a puff of air upwards and the lock of hair I'd had the urge to touch joined the collective mass of his scalp. "Bullshit."

I could see his arms under his jacket and I could imagine how warm his skin would be. My insides were liquefying, bubbling, boiling and all the while my head was screaming **_No, no, no! _**It knew what the bubbling, gushing feeling meant when it concerned another boy, but thinking it consciously would make it real, wouldn't it? So I just stood there, staring at Matt and trying not to, and wishing that he would just _go away_. Make all this inner turmoil cease. 

My brain seized on that concept with a blinding inner leap of joy. _Matt's fault!_ It crowed. It was Matt's fault that I felt this way! Matt's, not mine! Not my fault at all! "Fuck you, Matt." I snapped back, regretting and at the same time relishing the sensation of seeing him recoil wounded. It at once both added to and eased my pain.

He blinked eyes I was shocked to see were moist and reached out with both hands. He shoved me. "Stuff it, Kamiya." And I saw, mirrored in his own face, my inner turmoil. _He _blamed _me. _What a turnaround, how bizarre, yet making perfect sense at the same time. Did he look at me at class and wonder what if would feel like to run his fingers through _my_ hair?

Oh, God, there went my stomach.

"Bite me, bitch." I shoved back, harder. I almost felt happy. Again, Matt and I worked like clockwork together. We'd help each other out, then. Once a team, always a team.

He shoved.

I shoved, and the screw that had tightened in my chest whenever Matt slept over at my house, whenever we showered after P.E., whenever we hugged or hung out, loosened. The next time, though, after he shoved, I kicked it up a notch. Loosening the screw was fine, but why not get rid of it all together? I knew the solution. I punched, straight into that pretty face. I loosed all my aggression, frustration, confusion, _affection_ right into that punch.

He saw it coming.

He saw it, felt it when it impacted, but made no move to evade it.

He understood.

**__**

Prak! I punched him and he stumbled back against the lockers with a bloodied nose. It dripped down over his lips and stained his shirt collar. It spattered over my knuckles. _Bang!_ He was caught by the metal arms of the lockers and lurched again to his feet. A crowd was ringing around us, people hooting cheering, chanting, placing bets. 

My blood thrilled and I beckoned Matt closer. His eyes were blazing as we eased each other's pain with fists and insults where gentle hands and soft words should have been. We were determined to burn the feelings out of ourselves, and we found a primitive release in the heat of battle.

"Motherfucker!" He snarled and my head snapped back with a vicious blow that toppled the tower of my senses like a house of cards. My teeth clicked together and I tumbled ass over tea kettle backwards. "Motherfucker!" He snarled again, and jumped for me. The air whooshed out of my lungs as his weight settled on top of me and blows began snapping my head back and forth like some demented ping pong ball devised in an evil lab. You cannot imagine the pain. It was like fireworks exploding within my skull. But still, it was less than the pain in my heart. I almost laughed.

I could always trust Matt, you know?

"I." 

__

Pak!

"Asked."

__

Shrak!

Darkness fuzzed the edges of my vision. I could see the gaping maw of the crowd shrieking in delight and horror at what was happening to me. Matt and Tai! Fighting! Oh, how they would talk.

"You."

Prak!

"For!"

__

Crak!

I waited for the next blow to come and send me spinning off into darkness. His weight was heavy on my abdomen, his legs on either side of me, and for a moment I almost felt something like...affection, only cruder. Deeper. More vital. It didn't come from my head, it came from my gut. I opened my mouth weakly for the next blow, waiting for the blackness at the edges to finally creep in and suck me away from this.

It didn't come.

"Hel-ulp!" And suddenly the weight in my stomach was released. I blinked up blearily to see a teacher standing, Matt's bloody collar clasped in hand and furious expression on face. Well, I saw just enough before I lapsed into nothingness.

0

Which is how I got here.

The counsellor's office, scratching all this shit down into a ratty old notebook I found beneath Kari's bed. it was the only one in the house. It has stickers on it of little unicorns and one Sailor Moon. I kinda like the irony, so I left them on. 

A journal, the counsellor says. We both have to write in them. Put down our feelings, try to figure out why we fight so much. 

__

Maybe this, boys, he said over the top of his black file folder. _Will help straighten you two out._

If that was meant as a joke, it's really not funny.

Not funny at all.

...I wonder if anyone else knows.


End file.
